From: David Masover <ninja@...>
Date: 2009-09-08T06:23:35+09:00
Subject: Re: Rubyscript instead of javascript

On Monday 07 September 2009 05:53:13 am Eleanor McHugh wrote:
> On 7 Sep 2009, at 02:49, David Masover wrote:
> > At the end of the day, I suppose it's a matter of taste, and we'd
> > probably all
> > be much better off with a common VM in the browser (something like
> > Java or
> > Flash, but more closely tied to the DOM, and standard), so that no
> > one is
> > forced into one language or another.
>
> It seems that's part of Microsoft's thinking with Silverlight and the
> Mono project's Moonlight Linux/X11 implementation could make it a
> credible platform.

It looks interesting, but I have several concerns:

 - Mono always seems to be several steps behind .NET.
 - Microsoft has helped Mono and Moonlight, because they're fighting Flash. If 
Flash dies, that support may simply be dropped.
 - Software patents?
 - Forces users to download a third-party plugin.
 - Tons of additional crap, like XAML. Do we need it? I could be convinced, 
but I'd rather see it built on top of a simpler runtime, to ease third-party 
implementation.
 - Is this the best we could do? Microsoft built Silverlight on .NET because 
they're Microsoft, and it's .NET. Is it the best VM for the job?

What I've heard suggested instead is to take Adobe's Tamarin engine, merge it 
into open browsers like Firefox, and let Adobe quietly push it into IE via 
Flash. This has the advantage that everyone already has Flash, and Flash 
generally stays up to date somehow or other, so it would be instant, 
widespread adoption -- yet the Flash would be a hack for where the standard 
itself isn't supported.

That's a powerful platform -- if that's the direction Adobe is going. I have 
no idea -- a quick Google doesn't show whether any other languages target 
Flash, or could reasonably target Flash.

An example of where this kind of scheme might already be working well is the 
HTML5 video tag -- it can be made to gracefully degrade into a Flash player, 
and depending on the format you choose, it could even be the same video stream 
for either.